[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 7, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Page S51]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  TRIA

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I think it is important to understand that 
TRIA is legislation that we need, which is the Terrorism Risk Insurance 
Act. We passed a bill with only two or three ``no'' votes in the Senate 
last year. But what the House of Representatives has done looks like 
what they will probably do in the future: They have taken legislation 
which is really important to the country, which passed the Senate on a 
bipartisan basis, and they have loaded on to that legislation 
extraneous provisions.
  Frankly, that is what people in this country are tired of--when 
legislation that must pass and has overwhelming support is about to 
pass, special interest groups come and add their language to it. That 
is exactly what happened here. If the House of Representatives gets its 
way, if Wall Street gets its way, it is the first step to begin to 
slice away at the Dodd-Frank legislation.
  When I hear a number of my colleagues in this body and down the hall 
in the House of Representatives say they support progrowth policies and 
deregulation, what they are saying is they want to roll back the 
protections for consumers in Dodd-Frank, the Wall Street reform bill, 
and they want to weaken the provisions in the rules that govern Wall 
Street behavior. I don't quite understand it because what I do 
understand is less than a decade ago, because of Wall Street greed, 
because of Wall Street overreach, because this body and the body down 
the hall weakened the rules on Wall Street, and because the previous 
administration appointed regulators who would really look the other 
way, we had terrible damage done to our economy. About a mile north of 
the ZIP Code I live in in Cleveland had the highest number of 
foreclosures of any ZIP Code in the United States of America because of 
deregulation, because of Bush appointees to many of the bank regulatory 
bodies.
  So I caution my colleagues, as we accept this legislation, the TRIA 
legislation--and I assume we will--to understand that is not going to 
be behavior that we are going to sanction in the Senate, where they 
take must-pass legislation and they find ways to attach to this 
legislation rollback of consumer protections and weakening of Wall 
Street rules. That is what got us into this. We can't let these special 
interests who have so much power in the House of Representatives, who 
have so much influence in the House of Representatives--we can't let 
them have their way on legislation like this.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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